ARTICLE i - HENRY KNOX

In the winter of 1775, the American Revolution had a serious problem. The colonial army surrounding Boston had thousands of men. But almost no heavy guns.

Which meant the British army inside the city was essentially untouchable.

What the Americans needed were cannons. Lots of them.

Luckily, those cannons existed.

Just not anywhere nearby.

They were sitting nearly 300 miles away inside a captured British fort at Fort Ticonderoga, near Lake Champlain.

And moving them seemed impossible.

Unless you were a 25-year-old named Henry Knox.

Knox stood nearly six feet tall — unusually tall for the 1700s — heavyset, broad-shouldered, and known for a booming laugh. It was surprising that he wasn’t a professional soldier with such a commanding presence.

Before the war, Knox ran a bookstore in Boston called The London Book Store, located on Cornhill, the city’s main booksellers’ street. John Adams himself was known to stop by the shop, where politics and revolution were constant topics of conversation.

The shop was packed with military manuals, engineering texts, and the latest European writings on warfare.

And Knox didn’t just sell them.

He made sure to read them himself.

Page by page.

By the time the war began, the young bookseller had quietly turned himself into one of the most knowledgeable students of military engineering in the colonies.

Which is a little ironic.

Because years earlier, while working in that very bookstore, Knox accidentally discharged a firearm.

The blast mangled two of his fingers.

Doctors were forced to amputate parts of them, leaving Knox permanently missing portions of his hand for the rest of his life.

Not exactly the background you’d expect for the man who would soon command America’s cannons.

When George Washington realized the guns at Fort Ticonderoga might be the key to forcing the British out of Boston, the plan to retrieve them didn’t come from a seasoned officer.

It came from Knox. He proposed the mission himself.

Travel to the fort. Collect the cannons. And somehow haul them hundreds of miles back to Boston. In the dead of winter. Across mountains. Through forests. Over frozen rivers… with almost no real roads.

Washington approved the idea — even though most officers thought it was impossible.

Knox traveled north to Fort Ticonderoga and began assembling what he would later call the “Noble Train of Artillery.”

But he didn’t arrive with an army.

He had to build the expedition almost from scratch.

Knox recruited teamsters, farmers, and laborers from towns across New York and Massachusetts.

Farmers supplied teams of oxen strong enough to drag the guns. Carpenters built massive wooden sleds designed to carry the cannons across snow and ice.

Before the land journey even began, the guns first had to be loaded onto boats and floated down Lake George.

Knox used flat-bottomed barges to carry the heavy iron pieces down the frozen lake to its southern end, where the overland journey could finally begin.

The haul included 59 cannons, mortars, and howitzers, along with iron shot and powder.

Altogether the load weighed roughly 60 tons.

Day after day the expedition crept forward. On good days they covered ten miles. On bad ones, only three or four.

The men lived on simple travel rations — salted meat, bread, and whatever food they could buy from farms along the route.

At night they slept in taverns, farmhouses, or sometimes barns beside the oxen pulling the sleds.

As Knox wrote in his journal during the journey:

“The roads are very bad, and the snow deep… yet the cannon move on.”

Despite the conditions — frozen rivers, steep mountains, and sixty tons of iron — remarkably no men were lost during the expedition.

As the cannons passed through towns along the route, crowds gathered to watch the massive guns roll through the streets.

Church bells rang. Some towns even fired muskets in celebration.

People understood what those cannons might mean. They might drive the British out of Boston.

But the journey was far from easy.

At one point the expedition reached the Hudson River near Albany.

Winter had frozen the river solid. But a frozen river is only safe if the ice holds.

Each cannon weighed thousands of pounds. Too much weight in the wrong place could send the entire sled crashing through.

Knox later wrote about the moment in his journal:

“The river being frozen over, we attempted to pass it… though the ice cracked under the weight of the sleds.”

Slowly, carefully, the men dragged the cannons across.

Then the worst happened.

One of the sleds broke through causing a cannon to plunge into the icy water.

For a moment, it looked like the expedition might lose one of the precious guns.

But the men refused to abandon it. They rigged ropes. Harnessed the oxen. And slowly hauled the cannon back out of the freezing river.

Then they loaded it back onto the sled. And kept moving.

The hardest stretch came when the expedition reached the Berkshire Mountains.

Dragging the cannons uphill was exhausting.

But getting them down the other side was even worse.

The sleds threatened to accelerate uncontrollably down the steep slopes.

To prevent disaster, the men wrapped ropes around trees and used logs as makeshift brakes, slowly lowering the massive guns down the mountain.

It was slow, dangerous work. But somehow it worked. In another entry Knox wrote simply: “Succeeded in getting them over the mountains.”

The journey took 56 days.

More than 300 miles.

When Knox finally arrived outside Boston in January of 1776, word quickly reached George Washington.

The general rode out to see the guns himself.

Because he genuinely did not believe Knox’s plan could have worked.

But there they were. Cannon after cannon arriving outside the city.

Soldiers began joking that Knox had delivered “Washington’s Christmas present.”

Washington immediately realized what it meant.

For the first time since the siege began, the Continental Army had the firepower needed to threaten British positions in Boston.

Under cover of darkness, American troops hauled Knox’s cannons up Dorchester Heights, the high ground overlooking the harbor.

By morning, British commanders woke to a terrifying sight.

Dozens of cannons aimed directly at their ships and fortifications.

They had two choices.

Attack uphill against fortified guns.

Or leave.

Within weeks, the British evacuated the city, ending the Siege of Boston.

Years later, Washington described Knox’s mission as “bold and difficult… yet it succeeded beyond expectation.”

The young bookstore owner was quickly promoted to colonel and placed in charge of the Continental Army’s guns.

Over the course of the war, Knox would become one of Washington’s most trusted officers.

Years later, he would serve as the first Secretary of War of the United States.

So yes — The American Revolution’s first major victory happened because a bookstore owner dragged 60 tons of cannons through a frozen wilderness.

And yes - this is the guy Fort Knox is named after.

They certainly don’t make ’em like they used to.